Kari Lindberg – Women's eNewshttps://womensenews.org
Covering Women's Issues, Changing Women's LivesMon, 19 Feb 2018 16:54:18 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4How the U.S. Can Become a ‘Paradise of Gender Equality.’https://womensenews.org/2017/10/how-the-u-s-can-become-a-paradise-of-gender-equality/
Sun, 29 Oct 2017 19:04:02 +0000http://womensenews.org/?p=2876219Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia, crowned “a paradise of gender equality” by media for years, have routinely garnered a wishful longing from many American feminists. The aura of mystery surrounding gender equality in Sweden and Scandinavia is, however, not a mystery at all. The tools necessary to create this, as Lise Bergh noted in her speech to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2001, is to make gender equality central to policy-making.

To understand how Sweden made gender equality central to policy-making, one needs to first understand the two mechanisms central to policy-making: Sweden’s welfare state and social democratic ideology work in tandem to promote and enforce gender equality. Linnea Halvarsson, policy advisor on gender based violence (GBV) to Kvinna till Kvinna, a Swedish organization that promotes gender equality and empowerment worldwide, noted “the key to success for gender equality is a combination of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ reasons.”

“The Swedish social insurance system with paid parental leave and paid sick child care leave, enables women to be both mothers and professionals, and this is a result of the core policy of gender equality,” Halvarsson says. These core polices are supported by numerous equality act and anti-discrimination laws, such as the 2008 Anti-discrimination law (combining seven anti-discrimination laws into one), and an established Equality Ombudsman to enforce these laws.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the female participation in the labor force had leveled at 61 percent. With the enactment of these anti-discrimination laws, however, female participation in the labour force had risen to 83.7 percent in 2015.

Whilethe decades old debate about whether an Equal Rights Amendment is necessary to act as a legal framework to enforce gender equality in the U.S., Sweden, in contrast, does not have an equal rights clause in its constitution, nor have they ever sought to add one.

Why? Unlike Sweden, the United States, is not a welfare state (the U.S has limited implementation as it applies to social security and medicaid), and has legal authority shared by three executive branches. Together, these factors make it harder to form a collective and cohesive political and legal stance than in Sweden. Therefore, given the span of the U.S. government, the absence of gender-specific constitutional language carries very different outcomes for gender equality. Essentially, without a constitutional guarantee of gender equality, the responsibility rests with different levels and branches of government to interpret the Equal Protection Clause as they see fit.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asserted in 1979 that this has created ambivalence around enforcement of the Equal Rights Protection Clause. “Equal protection adjudication is not so mechanical, clear, and certain, as commentators, over courts, and some of the Justices observed, particularly in the early 1970s,” Ginsburg said.

Justice Ginsburg’s remarks are echoed by many lawyers and professors of law, who continue to assert that ambivalence around the enforcement of the Equal Rights Protection Clause does a disservice to women. “Right now, if the state intended to treat women differently from men, then you might have an equal protection violation,” noted Juile Suk, Professor of Law, Cardozo Law – Yeshiva University. “If the state is doing something that has a disproportionate impact on women, that is not considered an equal protection problem.”

Further, gender experts have generally agreed that in countries where higher levels of gender equality exist, higher levels of reporting of sexual assault coincide. “In Sweden, rape that occurs ten times in a relationship is reported as ten different crimes,” Halvarsson explained. “In most other judicial systems, it is counted as one single crime.”

Many legal scholars also hypothesize that enacting an Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. would dispel the ambiguity around the interpretation of the Equal Rights Protection Clause, allowing judges who view unintentional gender discrimination as grounds for legal action to take legal action. “For the judge who wants to open up a different way of thinking about gender equality, an Equal Rights Amendment would create an option that would provide a way out of some of the shackles of our past laws on gender equality,” stated Suk.

Garrett Epps, Professor of Law at Baltimore University, noted that an Equal Rights Amendment would further strengthen existing gender laws. “If the U.S. Constitution included equal rights for women, potential laws guaranteeing equal treatment would have a lot more oomph behind them.”

In light of the Trump administrations roll back on women’s rights, including: Reversing on-campus sexual assault guidelines, rolling back the Obama care provision mandating employers cover the costs of birth control, disbanding the White House council on Women and Girls, defunding Planned Parenthood, the Global Gag Rule, halting efforts to track the gender pay gap, and the pulling back on a 2014 law that enabled sexually assaulted women to testify in a public forum, many feminists wonder whether an Equal Rights Amendment would have prevented these actions. In response, Suk surmises, “If we had an Equal Rights Amendment, it might have changed the way our politics and laws evolved; they would have evolved in ways that might have been more inhospitable to some of the politics that are gaining ground today.”

Kari Soo Lindberg is a 2017 fellow in the Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program, funded by the Sy Syms Foundation. The Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program at Women’s eNews fellowship supports editorial and development opportunities for editorial interns in the pursuit of journalistic excellence.

]]>Women’s Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health: U.S. vs. Latin Americahttps://womensenews.org/2017/09/womens-access-to-sexual-and-reproductive-health-u-s-vs-latin-america/
Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:04:25 +0000http://womensenews.org/?p=2703275Rewind to the second week of last November in the United States. Regardless of political leanings, one of the dominant questions blazing across news headlines was: Would the United States elect a female president? While America pondered, others began looking toward the international community, especially Latin America — a region known for its violence and civil wars — that has elected more female presidents and female legislators than any other region in the world.

With Fortune magazine predicting that Latin America may lead the world on gender diversity by 2025, American experts have expressed a longing to make as much progress as Latin America has. “I just wish we could catch up to Latin America,” said Joan Caivano, expert on female leadership and deputy director of the Inter-American Dialogue, in an interview with Humanosphere. “There has been nothing but progress [in Latin America] since the ‘80s in terms of women’s representation in Congress, as Ministers and as Presidents.”

Latin America welcomed its first female president, Argentina’s Isabel Perón, in 1974, in the midst of an era of dictatorships and conflicts across Central and South America. Built upon strong solidarity and collectivist mobilization, the feminist movement became the major driving force in Argentina’s decision to implement the region’s first gender quota, mandating political parties nominate women for 30 electable seats. Since then, 16 of the 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have adopted gender quota laws, enabling the region to hold the world’s top regional average of parliamentary seats (average 25 percent).

In contrast, the U.S. has actually descended in the world rankings of women represented in government (from 49th in 1998, to 98th in 2016). Today, women make up only 20 percent of the federal government, with fewer than one in five members of Congress.

Increased representation of female legislators is known to improve women’s rights. Often, women push for greater legislation calling for the advancement of women’s equality, especially in terms of sexual and reproductive health. “These issues are more on the policy agenda because they’re tied to women’s lived experiences,” says Jennifer Piscopo, assistant professor of politics specializing in Latin American gender quotas at Occidental College. Further, sexual assault and reproductive health (although not abortion) provide common ground “for conservative female politicians to work across the aisle with their more liberal counterparts,” Piscopo adds.

A driving factor for enacting the quota laws throughout most of Latin America was the constitutional rewrite that included an equal rights clause. Constitutional guarantees have proven, in some cases, to be a crucial mechanism for enforcing gender rights. Notably, the Argentinean case of Sisnero, where Mirtha Sisnero was unable to find work as a bus driver, filed a complaint against the Metropolitan Transpiration Authority for systematic discrimination against women. Citing the violation of her constitutional and international rights, she won the case on the basis of constitutional rights, and the Supreme Court upheld the view that gender discrimination and her constitutional rights had been violated.

In contrast, the United States, which has federal, state, and local legislation that supports women’s equality — notably the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, does not have an equal rights amendment ratified to the US Constitution.

Still, even constitutional clauses have limits. Latin America’s constitutional limitations can be seen through sexual and reproductive rights, especially abortion rights. In Argentina and Bolivia, women are only allowed to obtain an abortion on humanitarian grounds (if a woman has been sexually assaulted, raped, or has a physical or emotional handicap). These laws have staggering consequences.

The Argentine National Campaign for a legal, safe, and free abortion estimates that 500,00 abortions are performed illegally each year, with the number of unsafe abortions serving as the leading cause of maternal mortality (currently at 31 percent). As in Argentina, botched illegal abortions have high occurrence rates in Bolivia (Women’s Hospital of La Paz reporting that, in 2015, 10 women per day were admitted in critical condition due to illegal abortion attempts). Illegal abortions also contribute to Bolivia’s high maternal mortality rate, with the World Health Organization placing it at the second highest cause of death for women in South America (205 deaths per 100,000).

Although many Latin American countries including Argentina, Bolivia, and Nicaragua all have equal rights constitutional clauses, due to the large presence of religion (specifically Catholicism), these countries have also enacted similar constitutional clauses guaranteeing a ‘right-to-life.’ The combination of these laws “creates a duality,” says Christina Ewig, faculty director of the Center on Women for Gender and Public Policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. “This constitutional duality makes it near impossible to expand abortion rights.”

Activists and researchers have noted, however, that regardless of a constitutional clause on gender rights, weak Latin American institutions are detrimental to enforcing women’s rights and access to abortion, even when they qualify. “Although there are several legal regulations in favor of women’s rights in Bolivia, these regulations are not enforced,” says Alicia Canaviri Mallcu, executive director of the Bolivian human rights organization CDIMA . “It is only a salute to the flag, as long as cultural norms of patriarchy and religious values are held to a higher standard than the desire for women’s advancement.” Concurrently, Piscopo wrote in, Female Leadership and Sexual Health Policy in Argentina, that regardless of a constitutional clause, “Whether Latin American women enjoy material changes depends on whether their leaders are committed to passing and implementing gender reform.”

In contrast, many experts believe that an Equal Rights Amendment in America would help ensure sexual rights and reproductive rights as well, especially abortion access in the U.S.. Several American states, since the rise of the Republican Tea Party in the 2010 elections, have moved to implement harsher laws restricting women’s access to sexual and reproductive health care, particularly via access to abortion. As of August 1, 2017, 53 state-level abortion restrictions have been enacted, according to Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy center in Washington D.C that supports abortion rights. More than 300 have been enacted, with 2,100 pieces of legislation attempting to curb reproductive healthcare, as tracked by the Center for Reproductive Rights, since 2011.

Amy Lieberman, communications manager at Guttmacher, says that U.S. polices and policy makers alike play a key role in ensuring the continued access to sexual and reproductive rights, specifically abortion rights. “Policymakers who not only support, but actively champion, sexual and reproductive health and rights are critical to mitigating the damage of these harmful policies and putting us back on the path toward ensuring the fulfillment of sexual and reproductive health and rights.”

Ewig agrees. “The U.S. has a pretty high degree of institutionally. It may very well make a difference to have an Equal Rights Amendment.”

Kari Soo Lindberg is a 2017 fellow in the Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program, funded by the Sy Syms Foundation. The Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program at Women’s eNews fellowship supports editorial and development opportunities for editorial interns in the pursuit of journalistic excellence.

]]>U.S. and South Korea: How Traditional Values with Religious Roots Still Impact Gender Inequalitieshttps://womensenews.org/2017/08/u-s-and-south-korea-how-traditional-values-with-religious-roots-still-impact-gender-inequalities/
https://womensenews.org/2017/08/u-s-and-south-korea-how-traditional-values-with-religious-roots-still-impact-gender-inequalities/#commentsWed, 30 Aug 2017 20:50:13 +0000http://womensenews.org/?p=2561597 If cultural capital is any measure of quantifying how developed a country is, then within the past decade, South Korea’s development has shot through the roof. Some would go so far as to say PSY’s 2012 song “Gangnam Style,” by becoming a global musical phenomenon and subsequently the first video to reach one billion views on YouTube, forged the yearning for Korean music and culture within the heart and minds of a generation of global youth. Given its increased accumulation of global soft power, ranking 18th on the 2016 United Nations Human Development Report, it is shocking that it still has a wide gender inequality gap—ranking 116th on the World Economic Forum 2016 Global Gender Gap, the lowest placement of any developed country.

South Korea’s gender gap seems particularly surprising given the amount of progress women’s rights have made in the country over the past three decades. Major steps towards equality include the 2000 legal act that ensured a 30% quota for female candidates running in electoral districts—as well as 50% for those vying for seats in the National Assembly—and the 2001 creation of the Ministry of Gender Equality (later renamed as the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family), which provides a legal mandate to promote women’s equality and empowerment. Despite women’s gains in their pursuit of equal rights, experts point to the prevalence of traditional values that stem from the Confucian ideals (man as a breadwinner; woman as a homemaker; family, honor, and respect; and related tenets) that have led to fixed gender binary spheres. Speaking to the Columbia Journal of International Affairs, Eun Mee Kim, Dean at Ewha Women’s University, described the seeming progression and stagnation of gender equality in Korea as “hav[ing] been heavily influenced by traditional thoughts such as Confucianism that really made it difficult for women to be respected equal to men.”

South Korean experts point to the deeply entrenched stereotypical gender binary attitudes that weaken gender equality and women’s protection laws. Dr. Jiso Yoon, researcher at the Korean Women’s Development Institute, a government-subsidized research institute promoting women’s capabilities and social and political participation, noted that a “study analyzing gender norms of Korean citizens suggest that factors like sex, age, and employment status explain behavior regarding gender roles.” Clear gender bias, stemming from traditional gender binary norms, may help explain Korean women’s 63.7% participation in the workforce, including the largest gender wage gap amongst the world’s developed countries at 37.5%, according to the 2015 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) gender wage gap report. (See chart above.)

Much like the role that Confucianist thought has played in shaping South Korean traditional gender norms, so too has an amalgamation of Judeo-Christian, ancient Greek, and ancient Roman thought shaped the American traditional belief that female and male genders belong to separate spheres (see chart on right). Throughout history, the American penal system has cited the notion of separate gender spheres to justify discrimination against women. The Supreme Court used that justification in the case of Bradwell vs. Illinois in the 1872 ruling that the 14th Amendment did not grant women the right to become lawyers, even if they were otherwise qualified, citing “God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action” as justification. Similarly, that same argument was made in modern time by Justice Kennedy in the 2007 Supreme Court case of Gonzales vs. Carhart, which upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion act of 2003 by stating, “While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.”

While the Supreme Court does not make explicit references to the Bible, its ruling implies a question about the justification for two separate spheres: Is it that these ideas of separate spheres cause people to believe that women shouldn’t be involved in public life, or is it that people use religious ideas to justify an existing social prejudice? Garrett Epps, professor of law at Baltimore University and contributor to The Atlantic, asserts that both are true: “Religious tradition belief is a cause, but it is not the only cause.” This illustrates how the traditional notion of separate spheres continues to enforces and justifies gender inequality in the US, particularly from a legal standpoint. Substantiating Epps’ assertion is the almost 3,500 pregnancy discrimination charges that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed in 2016, even though the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was created in 1978. As Emily Martin, vice president and general counsel of the National Women’s Law Center, said to Fortunemagazine, “It is still the case that too many people think pregnancy and motherhood are incompatible with work.” Experts have also cited motherhood and childcare as a factor in the 18.9% gender wage gap and women’s low labor participation rate of 72.6%.

Similar sentiments of a perceived motherhood penalty exists in South Korea. A survey of human-resources teams by Saramin, a job-seeking portal, found that one-third of firms had rejected female job applicants who were at least as well-qualified as the male candidates, responding that “only a man could do the job.” Factoring in such gender binary norms as child care, which is expected to be the role of the mother, and with working women spending approximately 3.5 hours a day on household chores, according to the The Economist’s 2016 Glass-Ceiling Index, female barriers to equality grow. Additionally, the Korean Ministry of Statistics 2014 survey found that 22.4% of South Korean women, ages 15–54, felt the need to quit their jobs after getting married, and 58.4% of these cited child care-related responsibilities. (See chart above.)

While South Korea and the U.S. maintain laws that make it illegal for employers to discriminate based on gender, gender discrimination in both countries persist. Major contributing factors include the prevalence of gender discrimination according to traditional binary gender norms and the notion of separate spheres. Given this reality, scholars, experts, and advocates in the U.S. are pushing for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, while South Korean activists are pushing for the ratification of a female quota system, each as a way to improve female labor force participation.

Activists in both countries view these laws as perhaps the only ways to eliminate traditional gender norms. Explaining it in an American context, Epps said, “If part of the Constitution included equal rights for women, and if Congress has the power to enforce this law, additional laws that may be passed to guarantee equal pay equal treatment as well, and would have a lot more behind them, in terms of the way the courts might interpret them.” From the South Korean perspective, feminist activist Hyojeong Kim wrote in an op-ed for the Huffington Post, “It is necessary to impose a quota system to ensure that 30 % of all high-level economic and political positions are held by women,” referencing that similar quota systems in Rwanda, Iceland, and Norway have helped increase female labor force participation.

Whether ratifying the ERA or creating a quota system would enable complete gender equality remains to be seen. Regardless, enactment of each would help override the traditional justifications that have continued to perpetuate gender inequality in both countries.

Kari Soo Lindberg is a 2017 fellow in the Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program, funded by the Sy Syms Foundation. The Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program at Women’s eNews fellowship supports editorial and development opportunities for editorial interns in the pursuit of journalistic excellence.

]]>https://womensenews.org/2017/08/u-s-and-south-korea-how-traditional-values-with-religious-roots-still-impact-gender-inequalities/feed/1Equal Rights for Women: Lessons from Rwandahttps://womensenews.org/2017/08/equal-rights-for-women-lessons-from-rwanda/
Tue, 01 Aug 2017 19:41:25 +0000http://womensenews.org/?p=2401950Rwanda, Namibia, and Burundi are respectively ranked fifth, twelfth, and fourteenth on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2016. All have ratified their equivalent of an Equal Rights Amendment into their respective constitution equivalents, unlike the United States, which has not and ranks 45th. In these sub-Saharan countries, especially Rwanda, ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment has provided a legal framework and support to lessen the gender gaps. The legal framework of Rwanda and its social and cultural norms, which at times impede the enforcement of gender equal laws, lay a lesson for the U.S., should gender equality become a legislative priority.

After the 1994 Rwandan genocide ended, 70 percent of the country was female, leaving the job of rebuilding the country’s now-destroyed social, economic, and political institutions in the hands of women—a complete shift, especially for the previously traditional patriarchal society. Given the role of women in the country’s reconstruction period, the Rwandan government established gender equality as a legal framework with the 2003 adoption of Article 9 in the Rwandan Constitution, which guarantees equal gender rights and requires women to be granted “at least thirty percent (30%) of posts in decision-making organs.”

“A legal guarantee of equal rights ensured that the government allocates resources to ensure that gender promotion is not just in theory but also in practice. Women and men in Rwanda have equal rights on all matters,” said Olive Uwamariya, Rwandan gender activist with Care International. Following the adoption of Article 9, Rwanda became the first country in the world with a female majority parliament in 2008, expanding the lead to 64 percent during the 2013 elections. Educational enrollment rate at the elementary school level has more than doubled, several initiatives targeting gender-based violence have been implemented—specifically, the 2010-launched One Stop Centres, where gender-based violence survivors can get immediate help—and the judiciary actively reduces laws that perpetuate gender-based violence.

In contrast, the United States, which has federal, state, and local legislation that supports women’s equality—notably the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, and the 1994 Violence Against Women Act—does not have the Equal Rights Amendment ratified and added to the U.S. Constitution. Currently, on the federal level the government is 19 percent women, one of the world’s lowest percentages of female participation in civil service.

According to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. has a 56 percent rate of female labor force participation. At 86 percent, Rwanda has one of the highest rates of female labor force participation. Greater labor participation also led to a narrower wage gap; in Rwanda, women earn 88 cents for every dollar men do, whereas in the U.S., the ratio is 83 cents. Individual finances aside, Rwandan women now benefit under law from three months of paid maternity leave, making it easier for women to rejoin the labor market while having a family. The United States is still the only developed country to not mandate paid maternity leave. Many Rwandan experts accredit the pro-women laws with the constitutional framework that guarantees legal gender rights and enforces parliamentary quotas for women.

However, constitutional amendments and institutional frameworks do not always translate into practice. “Although all the laws in Rwanda are positive and progressive when it comes to women’s rights, the enforcement of these laws is still the biggest challenge,” said Uwamariya. Reflecting one of those challenges is the high rate of gender-based and domestic violence, one of the highest in Africa. According to the United Nations Development Program, one in every three Rwandan women has experienced or continues to experience violence at the hands of her male relatives. Estimates by the 2010 Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey found two in five women, or 41 percent, have experienced some form of physical violence since the age of 15 with the percentage rising to 56 for married women.

“The problem of violence against women in Rwanda, as with many African countries, is rooted in the cultural beliefs and notions of masculinity reinforced through generations,” says Peace Ruzage, CEO of Aspire Rwanda, a Kigali-based NGO providing free vocational skills to vulnerable women to The Guardian. Nominated for the 2013 Guardian International Development Achievement Award for her work in the aftermath of the genocide, Ruzage believes that the biggest obstacle to eradicating domestic violence, and by extension, changing gender-based cultural and societal norms, is men’s resistance to treating women as their equals. Until that change comes, social and cultural norms continue to hinder women from participating in public spheres or feeling that they are worthy enough to say no to violence.

Like in Rwanda, an amendment itself is not enough to achieve the end goal of gender equality; it merely states it. An existing legal framework needs to work in tandem with cultural and societal norms that reinforce gender equality. The same applies to the United States. “Legal implementation of the ERA would need to work in tandem with continued cultural implementation of gender equality norms in order to close the existing gender gaps,” said Jillian Gilchrest, chair of Connecticut’s Trafficking in Persons Council, passing the ERA would be an important start.

Social and cultural norms appear to assert gender equality in the U.S., unlike in Rwanda. However, according to a 2016 poll by the ERA Coalition and Fund for Women’s Equality, 80 percent of those polled mistakenly believe that women and men are already guaranteed equal rights in the U.S. Constitution, with 94 percent saying they would support a constitution amendment on gender rights. Nevadan legislators used social and cultural beliefs of gender equality to oppose the March 2017 ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in the state constitution, asserting that women had already achieved equality in many spheres since the 1970s and no longer need the amendment for protection. This could not be further from the truth.

Claims by opponents of ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment often do not mention that equal rights legislation is not always followed or practiced. The Equal Pay Act went into effect in 1963, but a 2016 survey by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that women earned 82 percent of what men made, with Black and Latina women making almost 40 and 50 percent less, respectively. Similarly, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act went into effect in 1978, but several studies show managers have an inherent bias against hiring women for fear that they will drop out of the workforce. Former president of Planned Parenthood and social and political advocate of women’s rights Gloria Feldt described the phenomenon as the “ingrained implicit and explicit biases that are outside the legal framework but serve to hinder the advancement of women to equality.”

Experts speculate that ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment would create a clearer legal standard for enforcing existing legislation like the Equal Pay Act and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. “With passage and implementation of the ERA, there would be a clearer judicial standard for deciding cases of sex discrimination,” said Gilchrest. Clearer judicial standards and enforcing mechanisms were enacted after Rwanda passed the Equal Rights Amendment. This enabled the Rwandan judiciary to have greater legal jurisdiction over protecting the rights of women, most notably in the case Prosecutor v Uwimana Alexandre, in which the accused husband was sentenced to five months in prison after being found guilty of battery and verbal abuse toward his wife.

Too often, unfortunately, people aren’t aware of how important the Equal Rights Amendment is until they are standing in front of a judge.

Kari Soo Lindberg is a 2017 fellow in the Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program, funded by the Sy Syms Foundation. The Sy Syms Journalistic Excellence Program at Women’s eNews fellowship supports editorial and development opportunities for editorial interns in the pursuit of journalistic excellence.